Süddeutsche Zeitung

Pictures from Ratcliffe-on-Soar always look the same: green meadows, brick houses and the eight thick, steaming cooling towers in the background. Ratcliffe-on-Soar is a village in Nottinghamshire, in the middle of England, about 150 inhabitants, one church. Known because of the massive coal-fired power plant that has existed here since the 1960s. The BBC recently interviewed a few residents, one Raymond said that when they came back from a trip here, they would have seen the towers from afar, “that was nice because then we knew we were home.” One Lyn particularly liked the students and artists who photographed and drew the unique ensemble. She sounded wistful, because from now on everything will be different.

The Ratcliffe-on-Soar power station was closed on Monday, the last still operating in the UK. It is a historic moment in energy supply, a symbol. Because now the nation is phasing out coal, which was the first to do so – the world’s first coal-fired power station was built in London in 1882.

And Britain is not alone in this. According to a current study by the British analysis organization Ember, coal as an energy source is on the decline, especially in Europe and North America. Of the 38 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), eleven have already phased out coal, including Switzerland, Austria, Belgium and Slovakia. Overall, coal-fired electricity production in OECD countries has fallen by more than half (52 percent) since its peak in 2007, largely replaced by solar and wind energy. Natural gas also became more important. CO₂ emissions in the electricity sector fell by 28 percent during the period.

However, worldwide coal consumption and power plant capacity reached an all-time high in 2023. According to a report by the Global Energy Monitor organization from San Francisco, among others, this is largely due to China, where the government approved significantly more new systems in 2021 in response to an energy shortage. India is also continuing to expand. The two most populous countries in the world are responsible for more than 80 percent of the new coal-fired power plants currently planned worldwide.

Instead of the CO₂ extractor, a “clean energy park” is to be created

Nevertheless, observers like Christoph Bals, managing director of the environmental organization Germanwatch, see “an energy revolution taking place in the G-20 countries and increasingly in other emerging and developing countries.” On the one hand, due to the rapid electrification of areas such as industry, transport and heating. This also reduces overall consumption because fossil fuels such as gasoline in cars are comparatively inefficient. In addition, electricity is increasingly being produced using renewable energies, which are becoming increasingly cheaper. When it comes to solar, wind and, more recently, battery storage, the curves are going steeply upwards.

Mike Lewis didn’t sound wistful in Ratcliffe-on-Soar shortly before the shutdown, quite the opposite. The British boss of the German company Uniper, which owns the site, told the BBC that phasing out coal in Britain was a “hugely important milestone on the global path to decarbonization.” Instead of the power plant, a “clean energy park” is to be built there.

Open detailed viewCO₂ tax, support for wind farms, laws for renewable energies contributed to the coal phase-out, according to experts: Wind farm in the Irish Sea. (Photo: PAUL ELLIS/AFP)

The conservative government that had just been voted out wanted to call off the coal phase-out again. She thought it would be a good idea to build a new power station in West Cumbria for the first time in 30 years. 500 new jobs in the region, but also 400,000 tons of greenhouse gases per year. Environmental groups challenged the plan, but before the Supreme Court could deliver its decision, the new Labor government had scrapped the project. Instead, Labor wants to focus on renewable energies and even set up a state-owned energy company “Great British Energy”.

Solar and wind energy largely compensate for the loss of coal-fired power generation

In 2023, the Federal Republic was one of only four OECD countries in which coal was used for more than a quarter of electricity generation. At 27 percent, it was only behind Poland, Australia and the Czech Republic. But there is also a trend here: apart from an interim peak in the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s war in Ukraine, coal use is continuously declining. Last year, both hard coal and lignite fell to their lowest levels since the 1950s and 1960s, and 2024 looks similar. The weakening of the economy, which requires less energy, also plays a role.

However, the global coal, oil and gas industry does not want to be pushed out of the market without resistance. The fossil lobby knows, says Christoph Bals, that if the trend continues now with coal, and in a few years also with oil and gas, their business model will go into shrinkage mode. “They are moving heaven and earth, even at the risk of undermining democracies, to block this,” he explains.

In Great Britain, too, the move away from coal was not always without conflict. When the government of Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher closed the first mines in the early 1980s, at the time for cost reasons, there were sometimes violent protests. It was particularly violent on June 18, 1984, when 6,000 police officers met a huge crowd in South Yorkshire. The officers rode off, used batons, and stones flew. In the end, Thatcher’s government prevailed. 40 years later, Great Britain is now completing its coal phase-out.